


Common Sorrow

by startraveller776



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 10:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20673905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startraveller776/pseuds/startraveller776
Summary: He’s a regular at Saint Roch’s Extended Care Facility, the attractive man trapped in the unending limbo between married and widowed. Despite his tragic predicament, he’s cheerful, kind, empathetic—the kind of person who draws people into his orbit by simply being. Not even Regina Mills is immune to his easy charisma. But while their unlikely friendship begins innocently enough, shared pain gives it a depth that leads to something more.





	Common Sorrow

**COMMON SORROW**

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Regina starts at the unexpected voice, soft, rasping, British. She turns to find a man behind her, giving her a grin that reveals a set of dimples nearly hidden by a several-day-old beard. He’s handsome in an understated, rumpled way, and she feels uncomfortable that she notices. “Excuse me?” she asks more gruffly than she intends.

He points to the Styrofoam cup in her hand. “The coffee,” he says. “I’m certain they cut it with petrol or some other poison. You really shouldn’t.” There’s an easy warmth in his blue eyes, so unlike the guarded expressions she’s accustomed to. It unsettles her.

“I’ll just have to take my chances,” she replies with a smile—pleasant enough to avoid offending him, but not inviting. She doesn’t dislike him necessarily, but he’s too friendly, too open for this place, an establishment saturated with quiet malaise.

“I’m afraid I can’t, in good conscience, let you take that risk.” He holds out his own lidded cup that boasts the name of a coffeehouse she isn’t familiar with. “Here, take mine.”

She raises a brow. “Thank you but—”

“You have my word that I haven’t taken even the smallest sip. I promise it’s free of cooties—” he shakes his head with a soft laugh, “—or germs, rather. I have a five-year-old son, and he tends to rub off on me.”

Her smile turns sincere if fragile, and she’s swept up briefly in nostalgia, remembering simpler days when Henry would twist his young face up at the thought of catching the make-believe bug. But the thread of memory leads to his namesake, strangling the tenuous fibril of good humor.

The coffee in her hand is plucked, the proffered replacement pressed gently into her palm. “You need this more than I do,” the man before her murmurs, his expression sobering with empathy. “I’m Robin, by the way. You’re new to Saint Roch, I take it.” It’s not a question.

She nods, manages her name, her fingers curling around the paper cup as though it’s an anchor.

“I would say it’s a pleasure, Regina, but…” With a shrug, he leaves the rest unsaid. “You’ll find I’m something of a fixture in this place. If you need directions to the washroom, or want to have a chat with a responsive human being who isn’t required to be clinically detached, you can usually find me in room two-eleven.”

He starts to exit and pauses at the threshold between the kitchenette and the hallway. “It gets better, by the way.”

She frowns. “What?”

“All of this,” he says, waving a hand to indicate the extended care facility. “You get used to it, after a manner. The first visit is the worst.” He doesn’t wait for her response before disappearing among the medical staff navigating the florescent-lit hallway.

Later, as she sits by her father’s bed, she realizes that Robin was right. This is unbearable. When the elder Henry was in the hospital, there was still _hope_ that he might somehow recover from the stroke. But here, in this not-quite-hospice, the overly homey décor seems to declare that there are no more miracles coming. She isn’t ready to accept that Henry Sr. is gone in spirit, if not yet in body; she isn’t ready to accept that she’s lost another on her profoundly short list of loved ones. She laces her fingers with her father’s as a new wave of heartache washes over her.

* * *

It’s a month before she finds herself wandering toward room 211. She’s passed Robin in the corridors, returned his amiable greetings, held up a cup of properly brewed coffee to show that she’s learned her lesson. (She tried the fare in the tiny kitchen on her second visit; he was right about that, too.) He laughed and gave her a nod of approval before disappearing around a corner.

He seems to know every member of the staff by name. She’s overheard him ask after spouses and children at the nurse’s station. “How was Matthew’s birthday party?” and “Valedictorian? That’s fantastic! Be sure to pass my congratulations on to Angie.” She marvels at his genuine good cheer, wonders how many hours he’s put in at the facility in order to numb the crippling sadness that comes with this eternal limbo of a prolonged goodbye.

She doesn’t often visit in the evenings, but Henry is at Emma’s for the weekend—an arrangement that Regina is still not entirely comfortable with. It was supposed to have been a closed adoption, and tucked neatly behind her heart, she carries the secret fear that Emma will sue for custody despite her promises otherwise. When the house became too still, too empty without the whirlwind of her son’s exuberance, Regina felt a tug toward St. Roch—toward her father. Anything to fill the void.

Hand over his, she spends the hour after her arrival exhausting every detail of her day to a listless Henry Sr. She rests her head on his shoulder and wishes his arms would wrap around her—wishes she could hear his gentle voice murmuring words of comfort, of love. She’s so _tired_. Of crying. Of this illusion of having him when she doesn’t. Robin said this would get better. _When_?

Her heels clack against the Pergo flooring in the hallway. She doesn’t expect to see him, not at this hour, and she shouldn’t invade his privacy, but she has to know what brings him here so often. Maybe the relentless ache in her chest will ease with solid proof that she is not the only one stuck in this loop of unending grief.

The door is open, though the room is dark inside except for the ambient light coming from various monitors. Regina hesitates at the threshold, less confident in her decision as she looks at the shadowed form lying in repose. Curiosity eventually triumphs over caution, and her heart constricts as she steps toward the bed. The breath in her throat anneals when she lays eyes on his mysterious loved one. She imagined a parent or grandparent with skin like crumpled parchment—or even a sibling—but the woman in the blankets is clearly none of these.

She’s striking with an olive complexion and arched brows, peaceful as if she’s merely slumbering—as if her eyes might flutter open at any moment. Regina’s gaze slides over to a pair of framed photographs on the nightstand. One of Robin and his unnamed bride on their wedding day, elation stretching their mouths in matching wide smiles. The other is at a baby christening of the now five-year-old son he mentioned once. The joy radiating from both photos is almost palpable, painful in the wake of Robin’s current reality.

How does he survive? How can he be so _chipper_?

She backs away, wishing she hadn’t come, wishing the weight of this revealed mystery hadn’t settled like lead in her stomach. She doesn’t want to have to hide the sympathy that will surely pool in her chest each time she passes him in the hall. (Not pity, though. Because she knows this kind of stolen future, even though it’s been more than twelve years for her.)

“Leaving without so much as a hello, then?”

She bites down an involuntary yelp at the unexpected question. A figure—previously unseen in an armchair on the other side of the bed—leans forward, familiar face illuminated by the machinery. Robin wears a hint of a lopsided grin as he rises to his feet.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Regina says, though the excuse is flimsy—dishonest. She did mean to intrude; she didn’t mean to get caught. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He steps around the bed, features softening as he turns toward his wife. “You’ve met my Marian.” He raises a hand as if to reach for her, but then drops it with a sigh. A taut silence follows as he seems to have forgotten Regina’s presence. She feels more like a voyeur now and considers slipping out while he’s distracted.

“It’s date night,” he murmurs. To himself or to her, she doesn’t know. “That was something she insisted on after we married. She told me that the wooing didn’t stop after ‘I do.’”

His singular devotion makes Regina’s ribs ache with the memory of Daniel. He had the same kind of unwavering fidelity. “She must have been really special.” She winces at her use of past tense.

“She is.” Robin glances up at Regina—_through_ her. Strain draws a line between his brows, spidering the corners of his eyes, and he looks older, weary. “She was,” he corrects in a hollow voice, as if this is the first time he’s admitting to himself that the woman he knew and loved won’t be returning to him.

Regina looks away, unable to stomach the restrained anguish he’s concealed beneath the veneer of welcoming smiles. How long before she succumbs to the same immutable resignation to her father’s fate? “I’m sorry,” she repeats in a whisper, failing come up with a more appropriate response in this strangled moment.

He snaps out of his dreamlike state with a shake of his head. “How are you faring?”

How does he do that, effortlessly set aside his pain to share in hers? For a heartbeat, she’s tempted to let all the bleak thoughts that rattle around in her head come tumbling out of her mouth. She has no one to talk to, to help her shoulder this onerous burden. No one who _understands_—not like he would. But she won’t. Because she doesn’t know him. Because she wants to. An inclination which is likely born from the phenomenon of shared trauma, she tells herself. She ignores the voice inside hinting that it’s more than that.

It’s not. It can’t be.

“As well as can be expected,” she answers with as little emotion as possible.

He smiles as if he knows better. “Ah,” he says, “that good?”

A soft laugh escapes her before she can swallow it back. He makes this so easy, too easy, and a tendril of envy flares in her chest, chased down by a thick dollop of guilt. She’s not jealous of his complaisant manner; she’s jealous of his wife. No, she’s jealous of what they must have had—what she almost had with Daniel.

She sucks in a deep breath and edges toward the hallway. “I should probably—”

“I want to show you something.” Robin’s words rush over hers, and when she hesitates, he adds, “If don’t have somewhere else to be, that is.”

She opens her mouth with an automatic rejection, but it dies in her throat. After all, what’s waiting for her? Another few hours of silence at her father’s bedside only to return to an equally silent house? She waves a hand in vague acceptance. “Lead the way.”

He does. He guides her out of the room, down the corridor, through the door to the stairwell. After the first flight, she pauses with a hand against the railing, and slides off her stilettos. Robin wears a crooked grin—almost a smirk—and quirks a brow at her, but says nothing before directing her upward, ever upward. All the way to the rooftop door.

“You should probably put those back on.” Robin glances at her shoes as he reaches for the handle.

Her feet protest when she squeezes them into her heels. “Is this where you throw me off the building?” she asks in a sardonic tone.

He laughs. “I’m only murderous when it’s time to pay my insurance premiums,” he says, “and that’s not for another three weeks.” He swings the door open and disappears into the darkness.

Gravel crunches under her shoes as she follows him out—or tries to. Where did he go? She calls out his name quietly, thinks about heading back inside when hundreds of twinkling lights flare to life. Her hand goes to her chest as she takes in the incredible scene. Someone has built a garden that seems to span the entire roof of the facility. There are carefully trimmed bushes and planter boxes and a pathway made of slatted wood. She hears a water fountain hidden somewhere out of sight and wonders if koi fish are making sleepy circles in its base.

Robin is at her side again, giving her a closed-mouth grin as he leads her down the path past a row of potted trees and through an arched trellis woven with ivy. Beyond lies an alcove with cushioned lawn furniture arranged around a fire pit. The sky above is clear, glittering with dozens of stars that mirror the lights of the city below.

“What do you think?” Robin asks.

She shakes her head, breathes a quiet laugh because there are no words to adequately describe how amazing this rooftop garden is—and how grateful she is for this distraction. “It’s beautiful.”

He beams at the compliment, baring his teeth in a broad smile so different from the haunted expression he wore downstairs in his wife’s room. (It’s still there, at the worn edges of his gaze, but it’s _almost_ crowded out at this moment.) “Thank you,” he says. “It’s taken me a few years to put this all together, but I think it turned out all right. Have a seat.” He nods toward the chairs and then kneels before the fire pit, ostensibly to set it ablaze.

Years? How long has his wife been in a coma? Regina doesn’t pose the questions out loud, though. As she settles onto the bench with a back wrought with iron whorls, she asks instead, “You made this?”

Robin glances up at her, gives her a wink. “I did,” he says, turning back to stoke the tiny flame dancing beneath a teepee of logs. “I’m a landscape architect by trade.” He sighs, chin dipping before he goes on, “This place… They try to make it as comfortable as possible, and I respect that, but I wanted a bit of home—a piece of us, if you will.”

The night is filled with the crackling of the growing fire and the rustle of leaves as a soft breeze winds through the foliage. Regina kicks off her heels, tucks her legs underneath her as she considers the depth of his loyalty to his wife. This is a breathtaking tribute to her—and a gut-wrenching one.

He sits next to Regina, leaning forward with his forearms against his thighs. “She’ll never see this.”

“Maybe she will.” Regina isn’t sure if she’s referring to a miraculous recovery, or if she means that Marian will see it in spirit when she’s finally free of her prison made of unresponsive flesh and bone. Regina likes to believe that Daniel watches over her, even if it might be a fanciful delusion.

“You’re kind,” Robin says, looking over at her with wistful gratitude. His mouth turns down in a frown. “And you’re cold.” He shrugs out of his coat, and before she can protest, he has it wrapped around her shoulders, tugging the front closed so that she’s completely enveloped. “Better?”

She nods. His coat is tinged with the loamy scent of new earth and bark mulch and spring flowers. She wants to close her eyes and savor the warmth like an embrace—like the kind she wishes her father could give her. But this comfort isn’t hers, not really. She’s a proxy in place of Robin’s wife, just as he is, in a way, for the older, balding man several floors below.

“So, you’re one of those guys,” she says to dispel this misplaced intimacy.

Robin raises a brow. “One of those guys?”

“You know,” she says. “The gallant champion who would give you the shirt off of his back—or his coffee, at least—before riding off into the sunset on his white stallion.”

He snorts. “Yes, well, I do have a good deed quota to meet, lest the world stop turning,” he quips as he sits back, raking his hand through his hair. “You might be surprised to learn that I haven’t always been so valiant and noble.”

“What,” she returns with a cocked brow of her own, “you didn’t come out of the womb ready to cure the ills of the universe?”

He laughs, loud and hard, and the sound softens the brittle scars wound tightly around her heart. “No,” he says. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I was well on my way to becoming a world-class miscreant.”

“That’s hard to believe.” It is. He’s too good to have been anything but. “What happened that made you repent of your wicked ways?”

“Marian,” he says. “I wanted to be the man she saw in me. I wanted to be her hero.” He shrugs as if the transformation was that simple. “They say that’s one of the ways you know it’s real love—when the object of your affection inspires you to be a better person.”

Was it like that with Daniel? Regina loved him with every cell in her body, but had he inspired her to be better? Maybe. In him was freedom from the life her mother had mapped out for her long before she took her first steps. What had Regina done for him, though? What had she given him other than a set of emotional baggage and a future mother-in-law from hell?

“And you?” Robin asks, bringing her back to the moment. “Am I keeping you from your own sweetheart?” His question seems casual enough, but there’s something almost earnest licking at the corners.

She thinks about skirting the truth, considers making up some fictional man she goes home to every night. It would be so easy to let those innocuous, false words roll off of her tongue, but Robin has been so achingly honest with her, she can’t give voice to the lie.

“I do have a sweetheart,” she answers. “His name is Henry, and he’s eleven years old.”

Robin smiles. “You’re a mother. That’s fantastic,” he says with all the sincerity of a proud parent who _gets_ it.

Their discussion is then consumed by the foibles and antics and derring-do of little boys as the waning crescent moon rises in the velvet sky. Robin asks advice on how to handle the dreaded public temper tantrum, and she listens with rapt attention as he explains that Henry’s inexplicable adolescent behavior is perfectly typical for the male of the species. They swap laughter and sympathetic cringes. They talk about the challenges of single-parenting. And for a few, brief hours, Regina forgets the ever-present heartache of losing her father in drawn-out increments.

When the memory does return, after jaw-cracking yawns which warn her that it’s time to call it a night, the grief isn’t as sharp as it was before.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, handing Robin his jacket as they step back inside. “I needed the break.”

“Me, too,” he says, lips curving upward. “It’s been lovely getting to know you, Regina.” He hesitates a beat before wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug. Her eyes sting as he holds her a hair longer than he probably should. Because she thinks she could let herself fall apart, and he would somehow make it okay.

She needs this, as well. A friend. Maybe he does, too.

“I’ll see you around,” he says, releasing her. “Have a good weekend.”

“You, too.”

* * *

_Getting pissed at a quaint little Irish pub. Care to join me? _

The text from Robin comes just as she’s pushing open the glass doors at St. Roch. He knows she would be coming at this time, knows this is Emma’s weekend with Henry. (He also knows that Regina isn’t completely sold on the dock worker that Emma started seeing a few weeks ago—no matter how much Henry gushes about going sailing.) Over the last six months, Robin and Regina have developed a pattern. Weekday lunches at the diner down the road from the facility. The contest over obscure coffee brews. (Regina is currently in the lead with the Moroccan peppercorn blend.) And every other Friday night, aimless conversations in the garden until the return of autumn forces them to seek warmth at a nearby coffee shop.

He met her son when teacher in-service at his school forced her to bring him on her afternoon visit. Henry inundated Robin with an endless stream of questions as the three of them toured the plot on the roof. What kind of plant is that? Does this bloom all year or only in the spring? Did he sketch out his designs first like a building architect, or did he just start planting things? Robin answered each one and patiently expounded on the difference between perennial, annual, and biennial plants as he squatted in front of one of the planter boxes.

Robin’s boy, Roland, made his first appearance on the weekend when his regular babysitter came down with a stomach bug. She was taken with his dimpled smile, so much like his father’s, and his sweet demeanor inherited from his mother, as Robin tells it. Later that night, after Roland fell asleep in Regina’s arms, Robin told her how Marian’s heartrending circumstances came to be. It was a stalker, one who had been harassing her for years. Law enforcement hands were tied until he actually did something, and Robin suspected they dragged their feet because the stalker was ex-cop. Unfortunately, his first and only assault was the one that put Marian in her permanent slumber.

Regina doesn’t remember what the excuse was for exchanging phone numbers, but she looks forward to Robin’s random messages about some hilarious anecdote related to his son or an impossible request a client has made. She tells him the ridiculous business jargon she has to suffer through on a daily basis. Buzz words like “core competency” and “move the needle” and “burning platform” and “synergize.” He makes up a few of his own. She tries not to snicker during a meeting when a junior VP drones on about potential investments and “waxing eloquently flatulent” pops into her head.

She looks down at her phone now, wondering at the reason for the break in their usual routine. Skipping the visit with her father isn’t even a question, and she would succumb to the long-familiar guilt, except she did see him hours ago. As her finger glides across the touch screen of her phone, she chooses not to dwell on the fact that she saw Robin this afternoon, too.

_What’s the occasion? _

His reply comes a minute later.

_A real banner day. And I mean that with the upmost sarcasm. I’ll tell you all about it if you come. _

She’s already getting in her car before she asks for the address. Of course she’ll meet him. They’re friends—she might be willing to admit that he’s her best friend, if push came to shove—and friends support one another, especially during rough patches. That her heart seems to swell when her gaze falls on his truck parked outside of the bar only means that he’s become one of two rays of sunshine in her relatively dark life. Two perfectly _platonic_ rays of sunshine.

Inside, a young man sits on a stage barely more than a staircase landing, strumming a guitar and singing that his love is fairer than red roses and lilies of the valley. She’s tempted for a moment to wander closer, to bask in his clear tenor like a child drawn to the pied piper.

Robin sits in a booth in the back. He spins a half-empty tumbler as he stares blankly at a spot just beyond his drink. Something must have happened. She hasn’t seen him this dejected, not since the night when he referred to his wife in the past tense. The expression is undeniably wrong on a face made for frank smiles and playful smirks. She wants to erase whatever is troubling him and bring back the good-natured man she’s come to know.

(_I wanted to be her hero_.)

She’s nearly to the table before he glances up at her, and the metamorphosis that comes over him steals the air in the room. He’s happy, acutely relieved to see her, as if she’s the lifeboat to his sinking ship. He rises, murmurs her name in supplication as he enfolds her in his arms, burying his nose into the curve of her neck. She doesn’t come from a demonstrative family—Henry taught her the virtues of physical affection—but this, with Robin, has always been natural. His hugs in greeting and parting, the comforting hand he places on hers when she’s upset, the light brush of his fingers against her lower back as he’s leading her somewhere.

She would worry that they’re becoming too familiar—that they’re on the verge of making true the rumor whispered between the nurses at St. Roch—if he wasn’t absolutely faithful to his Marian. He is. And Regina respects him all the more for it. She expertly smothers the what-ifs that needle into her thoughts when she’s alone in her bed at night.

He draws back, lingers in their embrace for a few seconds more before releasing her. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says as he retakes his seat.

She slides onto the leather bench across from him. “What’s made them sore?”

He knocks back the rest of his drink and sags as if the weight of the world has settled across his shoulders. “The insurance company has decided to pay only a fraction of Marian’s care. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It has, after all, been a year since my annual court battle with them.” He blows out a heavy sigh and rubs a hand across his beard. “Do you know what that new doctor on staff— Whale—had the gall to say to me this afternoon? He said that keeping Marian alive when she was so clearly brain dead was akin to torture. Torture! Can you believe that? He said that I should let her go and get on with my life. I told him exactly what I thought of his bedside manner.”

Regina waves one of the servers over, orders a refill for Robin and an Irish Rickey for herself at his suggestion. (When in Rome—or a little piece of Ireland in Boston.) They’re going to need a generous dose of alcohol to take the edge off of his woes. “Did you file a complaint?”

“Against Doctor Whale? Monday, perhaps. I don’t want to think about it right now,” Robin says. “Tell me about the rest of your day. What exciting adventure is Henry embarking on this weekend? I could do with some good cheer.”

She doesn’t have anything interesting to offer, not from today. Work was the usual flurry of meetings and business calls and paperwork. As far as she’s aware, Emma planned a quiet, Killian-Jones-free visit for their son—which means Henry will come home full of pizza, video games, and movies. So Regina recounts last year’s disastrous company retreat for Robin instead. He laughs at the sudden torrential downpour during the “team building exercise” also known as rafting—or near-drowning in the case of the Director of Acquisitions. He’s suitably offended by the drunken accusation of infidelity the CFO’s wife made—as if Regina would ever darken Albert Spencer’s bedroom doorway. She shudders at the thought, and Robin laughs harder.

The stories spill freely as their drinks are refreshed again and again. He tells her about his misspent youth as an amateur thief. She makes a retort that it couldn’t be helped, not when he had the name of a mythical character with the same profession. Only if, Robin counters, he considers himself the “poor” because he was the sole beneficiary of the car stereos he pilfered. He does admit with a rueful smile that he’s handy with a bow and arrow, and Regina promises him that he’s given her enough ammo to last the next several months.

He sobers after telling her how he crossed paths with Marian. (A botched robbery that earned him a faceful of pepper spray.) Their conversation tapers off from there. Robin frowns, lost in that place he shares only with his wife. Regina doesn’t try to draw him out. She has the same hidden vault in her mind with a shrine to all things Daniel. She’s had more time to adjust to the tragedy that she will be the only one to carry that private history between them—the precious moments that only the two of them were privy to. The notion is still relatively new to Robin, and she hurts for him.

“Sometimes,” Robin says, gaze fixed on his glass. “Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if she hadn’t survived the attack—if she’s never to wake again.” He looks up at Regina, conflict flickering in muscles of his jaw. “Does that make me terrible?”

“No.” She tries to put herself in his place, imagines Daniel trapped the same coma, still breathing but no longer alive. She thinks of her father almost but not quite killed by a stroke. “It wouldn’t have been better,” she says, and at Robin’s frown, she clarifies, “if Marian had died instead. My fiancé was killed in a car accident a week before our wedding. It’s not better. It’s just a different kind of misery.” She hasn’t told Robin about Daniel. He hasn’t asked about her love life aside from the throwaway question he posed the first Friday night they spent together.

Robin reaches across the table and gathers her hands in his. Genuine compassion floods through his touch, through his gaze as he holds hers. “I had no idea,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was twelve years ago,” she explains. “I haven’t—” she pauses, unsure if she wants to lay all of her secrets bare no matter how much the whiskey may have loosened her tongue, “—I’m still grieving.”

Robin’s frown deepens as though her confession has made her loss direr. “Have you never loved anyone else?”

_You_. The word that races to the tip of her tongue sets her cheeks alight with mortification. She’s always denied the possibility of feeling more than friendship for him, and it seems that her heart has betrayed her anyway. “Lightning never strikes twice in the same place,” she says, withdrawing her hands. His calloused fingers curling against her palms was suddenly too electrifying—too forbidden. “That kind of magic is once in a lifetime.” _Lie, lie, lie_, every cell in her body seems to scream in defiance.

Robin shakes his head, the movement exaggerated and sloppy; he’s had more to drink than she has. “I don’t believe that,” he says. “I can’t.”

She hates that she questions whether his abject conviction is for her sake or his.

“Someday,” he continues, “you’re going to finally open your heart to someone again, and he’s going to thank his lucky stars that you chose him. I only wish—” he cuts off abruptly, shaking his head again with a feeble imitation of a laugh. “It’s getting late, isn’t it? I had better see you home.”

He suggests they share a cab, citing that neither of them would pass a breathalyzer. She agrees as long as she can pay the tab, though she can’t quell her unease at spending more time with him—not when his half-grin pebbles her skin with goosebumps like it never has before (like she’s never _allowed_ it to before). She can’t do this. She can’t _feel_ this. Not for him.

He doesn’t say anything on the ride, but stares at the passing scenery as if the blurry shadows are extraordinarily fascinating. She’s suffocating. She wants to get out, get away from him until she sobers, until she can rein in these uninvited emotions and trample them to dust beneath the weight of reality. At least she has the next two days to resolve this inconvenient issue before she sees him on Monday. Losing one of the greatest friendships she’s ever had over something as stupid as falling for him is not an option.

He walks her to her door, despite her argument that she can manage the short distance fine on her own. “It’s against my champion’s code of honor to let a damsel fend for herself.” He looks her over and amends, “Even one as capable as the Lady Regina.” He gives her a flourishing bow, and she rolls her eyes. Yes, she can fix this before her traitorous heart ruins everything.

When they reach her porch, he hugs her and whispers against her ear, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you came out with me tonight. Thank you.” But he doesn’t let her go, not yet. His arms cinch tighter around her, and one of his hands drifts upward to cradle the back of her head. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

His harmless admission is a vise, crushing her with the knowledge that she can never have more than this. “Anytime.”

He pulls back, brushes a stray lock of hair from her forehead. “I don’t think you realize what an incredible woman you are.”

No, no, no, he can’t say that. He can’t look down at her with this kind of tenderness. “Yes, well,” she says, desperately attempting to keep the broken _I love you and I wish I didn’t _out of her tone, “humility is a virtue.”

His mouth curves in a hint of a smile. “And here I thought I was the virtuous one of the two of us.” He traces the line of her jaw, tipping her chin up. His thumb grazes her bottom lip as he murmurs, “I’m not, though.”

This is how he shatters her. She can’t fix _this_—his newly revealed attraction to her. There was still hope when she believed she carried the unwelcome torch alone, but she’s corrupted him somehow, and the way his gaze falls to where his thumb was a second ago says that he’s willing to sell his soul to have what he shouldn’t want. She can’t let him. He’s a good man—the best she’s known since Daniel—and he doesn’t deserve to live with the regret that will fester in his system like poison if she doesn’t stop him now.

(_They say that’s one of the ways you know it’s real love—when the object of your affection inspires you to be a better person._)

“The meter’s running,” she breathes as he leans into her. It’s not all she needs to say, but it’s enough.

He seems to shake himself from his trance, brows furrowing as he glances back at the waiting cab. “Right,” he mutters. He steps back from her, drags a hand over his face. “That’s goodnight, then. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Only to say goodbye, but she can’t bring herself to speak the sad truth out loud.

When he reaches the vehicle, he gives her a parting look naked with disappointment, with longing and sorrow. Everything has irrevocably changed between them, and he knows it.

Henry is all she has left now.

* * *

The knocking begins in earnest as she’s pouring herself a cup of coffee. Her eyes are swollen, gritty from a night spent grieving a friendship—and a love just beyond her fingertips. She came to the grim realization that this is worse than losing Daniel. He was taken from her. She chose not to be with Robin. Because being with him would taint them both—even if her heart pleads that it’s worth the cost.

Her unknown caller rings the doorbell, and she’s grateful that she had the good sense to put a robe on over her pajamas before coming downstairs. She combs her fingers through her hair before opening the door, ready to send off whatever Girl Scout has come to sell cookies. Today is not a day for people. Including pig-tailed little girls trying to earn a trip to Disneyworld.

Her breath catches when she finds Robin standing on the other side. He’s as haggard as she feels, and she almost slams the door shut. She’s not prepared for this conversation.

“Hello, Regina,” he says in a voice made of gravel. He glances past her into the house. “Is Henry home yet?”

“Not until tomorrow,” she answers.

Robin nods, gnawing on his lip. “May I come in?”

_No_. “Of course.” She stands aside to give him entry, and her thoughts swirl with questions she doesn’t want to know the answers to. Has he come to apologize for the last night? Does he _remember_ last night?

He does. He has to, or else he wouldn’t be here now. Has he come to the same conclusion she has—that they’ll have to avoid each other from now on?

He sits on her sofa, and she follows suit, perching on the edge of cushion, her back ramrod straight. Strained silence falls thick like fog between them, unbreathable, choking. She swallows, unable to find the strength to broach the stillness.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says after a moment with a wan smile. “I…” He sighs, examines the pattern stitched into the upholstery. “It’s been more than four years since I—_we_—lost Marian, and I’ve been doing a rather bang up job of keeping it together. Or so I thought.”

He looks up at Regina with a wet gaze. “These last few months,” he continues, “have been the happiest I’ve been in ages, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you.”

She wants that too, so much that she feels as if she’ll crumble beneath the force of it. But life doesn’t come with a rewind button. There are no take-backs. “We can’t go back to the way things were before, Robin.”

“No, no,” he says, scooting closer to her and capturing her hand in both of his. “You misunderstand me. I don’t want to go back.”

She frowns. “I don’t—”

“I’m in love you.” He squeezes her fingers. “I have been for a while now. I cherish our friendship, I do, but I need more.” He inhales as if steeling himself what he’s planning to say next. “I want a life with you, or at least, the chance of it.”

Her battered heart wants to take lumbering flight, but her revelation from last night still stands. He deserves better than this—than her. “I’m no good for you.” At his perplexed expression, she explains, “I don’t make you want to be a better man.”

He lets out a laugh of disbelief. “You think making me happy doesn’t make me a better man? A better father to my son? Better in my work?” He presses her hand against his chest, and his heartbeat races underneath her palm. “You brought me back to life.”

This is everything she could hope for, but there is an insurmountable hurdle looming over them. “Your wife.”

“I know.” His head drops in reluctant agreement. “It’s a messy, complicated situation, and we’ll have to figure out a way to set it right. But I think she wouldn’t have wanted me to spend the rest of my days alone. I think Daniel wouldn’t want the same for you, either.”

She stares at him, tries to dredge up another reasonable counterpoint, but the resolve she’s clutched with white knuckles becomes insignificant in light of the brilliant hope radiating from him. He’s right. He’s always been right.

“Okay.”

A breath passes. Another, and then he’s cupping her jaw with his rough hands and pouring everything said and unsaid into a sweltering kiss. She melts into him, lets him yank her to him as she grips the front of his shirt. She murmurs three words against his mouth; the confession is liberating. She repeats it a second and third time, and he breaks off the kiss to smile at her with unadulterated elation.

This, she realizes, is the heaven that comes after a trial by fire.

* * *

_“And you?” Robin asks. “Am I keeping you from your own sweetheart?” He feels like a tosser for even posing the question. It’s none of his business, and yet, he has to know, though he can’t say which answer he’s hoping for. _

_“I do have a sweetheart,” she replies, and his gut sinks like lead. “His name is Henry, and he’s eleven years old.” _

_Robin’s disturbed by how relieved he is that she’s single. But she’s made him laugh—the first real laugh he’s had since his world splintered into a thousand irretrievable shards four years ago. He hasn’t allowed himself this kind of easy mirth with anyone but his son, no matter the pleasant guise he wears for others. It felt like betrayal, enjoying any part of life that didn’t involve Roland, but God help him, he likes this audacious creature sitting next to him, wrapped in his coat. And he selfishly wants to keep her all to himself. _

_“You’re a mother. That’s fantastic.” _

Less than a year later—and a week after his divorce is finalized (an event that inspired a fresh bout of mourning)—he stands at Regina’s side before a justice of the peace in a quiet ceremony.

This isn’t the life he planned on, but he would walk through all that anguish, all that suffering again if it meant finding her on the other side.

**~FIN~**


End file.
